On Discourse and Cute Girls
by naranjie
Summary: somebody save peri's "studious gay ass" aka another unwarranted coffee shop au


Take Social Sciences units, they said. It will fluff up your credentials, they said. The not-so-humble part of her bristled that her Computer Science units are enough to put her in any company she will choose, you clod— but the perpetual anxious part of her decided that it doesn't hurt to be prepared anyway.

Peridot huffed as she set-up her laptop and readings on one of the ever small tables of the local Starbucks, and a huge library book on her lap. After cursing Ms. Pearl, their bright yellow canary of an adviser, and opened an old document.

"Sooooooo this paper aims to explore the concepts of _fuckfuckfuckfukccfu_ for the goddamn 3 units cue snoring right about _now_. The researcher would probably tackle the propositional meaning of this fucktards and ultimately, try to find their different pragmatic usages in discourse coz why the fuck not? Fucking _end_ me..."

"Pfft… I'll give you 50 bucks if you should pass this as it is, Per." A deep voice chortled from her left side. Why Jasper was beside her while she crammed her final paper for Linguistics 100 was beyond Peridot. The buff woman didn't even have a bag in hand, let alone a book.

"Two things, Jasper." The blonde drawled, raising her stubby fingers. "First, you don't have that kind of money. Two, what the fuck are you even doing here?! I thought you're done with your finals?!"

"Chill." Jasper took a huge and obnoxious sip from her venti, double whipped cream caffeinated sugar coma and smacked her thick lips, "Wanna watch you suffer yours."

"I hate you."

"Love you too, Per."

"I know where you sleep. One of these days, I swear to god, I will crawl to your bed at night—"

"Per, you need to check your threats. That's gay. I mean… I know your ga—"

"With an electric shaver."

Jasper shivered and grabbed the nearest locks of her thick hair from the blonde, "You wouldn't."

"Or would I?"

"Fuck off my hair, you gremlin."

"Then fuck off my studious gay ass. I got shit paper to do."

The buff girl just took another sip of her frappe as if in deep thought, "Truce."

"I thought so."

With a satisfied relish, she turned from her roommate and grabbed the thick book she borrowed from the library. Peridot sighed, "Alright… might as well finish this."

* * *

To say that Peridot was having problems with her final paper was announcing defeat but more than one hour in and she's still browsing through her RRL's. Yep. She was doomed. She'll need more content than these. Heaving a deep breath for the nth time that night, Peridot grabbed her book and perused it for the third time.

"The problem here is typical of discourse analysis in that the task is to define the meaning (or discourse function) of a word or construction which seems to have next to no value on its own, but in each individual context gives it a quite distinct and unmistakable colouring. (Carlson 1984: 28)"

"What was that, Carlson?" Peridot whispered to her book and read the excerpt again, her brain screaming for more caffeine.

She drew her eyes across the word despite knowing she didn't processed anything and relented to try to reading the text out loud. "The problem… discourse analysis in that… define the meaning… next to no value…"

It worked. Words were processed and taken in so Peridot surrendered to quietly reading out her book. Anything to finish this goddamn paper.

* * *

Peridot lost the track of the time and honestly couldn't care less about it as she typed furiously on her laptop. Halfway through her analysis, she was feeling confident of her case. Then, she hit another stump. She'll need a stronger argument than that!

With heavy eyes, she reread the words she had typed, then mouthed them silently while staring at a random direction. "… it is therefore in the semantic case role of undergoer… referent of the root word… may be a material object…. or a reified concept… quality or process…"

Peridot adjusted her glasses and looked back at her laptop screen, ignoring her snickering roommate. Probably watching a vine or something, she thought.

"Naylor noted that the statives that are composed of the ma- affix and a reified concept (process) are distinctly connected to verbs."

She stared into the void again. "…Statives… composed of the ma- affix and a reified… process… connected to verbs… goddammit!" There goes her analysis. Jasper, on the other hand, was wheezing, trying to contain her laughter beside her, "What the fuck is funny, you clod?!"

Winded, her roommate could only point to the direction where she was staring just now. On the other side of the coffee shop— right in her line of vision while she angrily whispered her text — was a cute, blue-haired girl, looking at her with obvious amusement.

Realization came to Peridot in harsh clarity. "Oh my stars…" she whispered, hiding her red face from the girl— nope, from the world. The bright lighting from her laptop screen was nothing compared to her face. She just embarrassed herself in front of a cute girl! That's it. This is the end. She whimpered for someone to end her and her suffering.

Peridot squeaked when she felt a person stood in front of her. This is the end. Wishing for a Blue's Clues-esque powers to enter her computer and cursing when that didn't work, she whimpered on the keyboard, not caring at the keyboard-smashed paragraph in her screen. She'll never resurface from her laptop. Nope. Not gonna do it. No one can make he—

"Excuse me."

Peridot sat straight in attention. The girl, cute from a distance, was even prettier up close. Hair tinged with navy blue on top of her pretty bemused face and clothes that screamed stylish-but-casual, the blonde felt her face redden from a whole new different reason. "Y-Yes?"

"Hi, my name's Lapis," The girl offered her hand and Peridot shook it awkwardly.

"P-Peridot."

Lapis snorted and giggled, "You look like you could use more coffee," her eyes drifted to the overused coffee press on Peridot's table, "—next time. Are you going to be here tomorrow? I'd like to learn more about you and," she peered at the cover of Peridot's book, "… discourse particles."

The blonde swallowed and nodded at the question, never minding the fact that she'll be eating cup noodles for dinner at this rate. The girl grinned and seemed to glow under the coffee shop's soft overhead light, "Great! See you tomorrow, Peridot."

With that, Peridot watched her twirled and walked to her own table, grabbing her packed up books and bag. She squeaked again when Lapis turned to her and mouthed, "Good luck!" Then, she was gone.

An entire minute passed after the jingling of the bells of the café entrance, "Did you just picked up a cute girl by staring at her?" Jasper asked, dumbstruck, "Per… teach me your ways!"

Needless to say, Jasper was insufferable and Peridot was red-faced throughout the night. She did however, finished her paper and gain better appreciation for Linguistics and discourse particles. Social Sciences weren't so bad.

* * *

Dont hate peri. Those are my actual readings i cri. kinda fucked up my formatting. you can also read my stuff at ao3 (naranjie_6)

Aijmer, K. (2002). English discourse particles : evidence from a corpus (Vol. 10)  
Aldea, A., Chu-Santos, C., Katigbak, L. & Perez, C. (2013). Adjectives? think again: statives in Tagalog. Retreived from: .edu/5298479/Adjectives_Think_again_Statives_in_Tagalog


End file.
